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Angry Chinese Blogger:
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The Rabbit Hole: Firework Safety, What's That?
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| With Spring Festival, and China’s peak period for firework related emasculations over, it is probably a good time for me to reflect on the Chinese fireworks culture. People in China like fireworks in the pretty much the same way that the French like the Germans and British (as in they want to set fire to them, then blow them up), and fireworks are as synonymous with China as firearms are with America. They are everywhere and just as you can hear the rattle of machinegun fire in LA during the height of summer, so you can hear the crackling of firecrackers in China at the start of the new year. Culturally, people in China like to set off fireworks to ward off ill spirits; after all, spirits aren’t stupid. Who wouldn’t run away from a Chinese man holding a two kilo pipe bomb in his hands while he waits for it to explode? Worldly Wisdom During my travels, I have had the dubious pleasure of being in Britain during a local fireworks festival called Guy Fawkes night, which on, the face of it seems like a quaint winter festival where villagers gather around large bonfire and light copious numbers of fireworks, that is until you realise that there is a dummy on the bonfire, and the people are pretending to burn a man to death. Anyway, but I digress. The one thing that I noticed, about being in Britain for this festival, aside from the otherwise pleasent people pretending to burn a man to death, was that you couldn’t move without seeing a fireworks safety warning. In Britain, a country where fireworks aren’t part of the culture, and where people let them off at maybe one or two events each year, there were posters on the walls, public safety messages during the cinema previews, warnings on the television, and renewed calls from ‘special interest’ groups (read; interfering, possibly gay, bleeding heart liberals who want to spoil everybody’s fun) demanding that the government ban fireworks because, last year, somebody’s brother sat on a cherry bomb and turned himself into somebody’s sister. Naturally, when I arrived in China, a country that has a history of fireworks stretching back over 1000 year (if you believe Chinese history books that is), I expected to be overwhelmed with public safety messages warning that children who put firecrackers in their pants might suffer from capitalist castration incidents, but no, ‘not a dickybird’ (a British expression meaning f*^k all, don’t ask me why). Death Wish When it comes to fireworks, the Chinese public seems to have the self preservation instincts of a suicidal lemming who has just run out of Prozac. To illustrate my views, during my first year in China I was attracted to my apartment window by the sound of fireworks going off outside, and I stood there in mild amazement and watched a small crowd proceed to light something that would be described by the US government as an IED (improvised explosive device), and by everybody else as a huge great bomb, with a book of matches. They then retreated to a safe distance of three or four feet, by which time the IED (Bomb), which was probably designed to be secured to the ground, or at least moored in a barge in Tokyo harbour, decided to topple over. It then proceeded to disgorge two dozen rocket propelled projectiles into the crowd, most of whom I believed lived to tell the tale. It was also around that time when I was standing on a veranda outside a friend’s apartment and noticed that a Chinese friend, who really should have known better, was lowering a string of super-size firecrackers, the type that could probably be used to wipe out an Israeli armored column, down beside us from the veranda of the apartments above us. Needless to say, the apartment owner was not impressed. I have also seen people holding onto rockets by the launch sticks, instead of hammering them into the ground, throwing firecrackers at each other, and numerous others near suicidal acts, and a good number of these people not only seemed oblivious to the dangers of playing with what are essentially small hand grenades, but many were children who appear to have been encouraged to do so by their proud parents. Safety Warnings It would be unfair of me to say that I’ve never seen a firework safety warning in China; unfortunately the ones that I have seen sort of missed the point a little. You’re going to have to use your imagination here as I don’t have any pictures, and I realise how difficult this might be for American’s, who have been watching too much television, and thus have no imagination, and for Japanese, and people in other countries, who went to schools like mine, where imagination was beaten out of you, along with independent thought and and any unnatural tendencies to write with your left hand (I still have the scares to prove this one, fortunately for me most of them are on my knuckles, from where I hid round a corner before jumping out and punching my childhood teacher in the face two dozen times to make up for years of being hit on the top of the head with a book if I even looked like I was about to pick up a pen in my left hand while I was in junior high). Picture this: Scene 1 A child sets is about to set off an IED (firework), but his dutiful father rushes up to him, pulls the matches from his hand, and shakes his head. A good wholesome message? Not quite. Scene 2 The father draws the child’s attention to a government billboard forbidding people to set off fireworks within residential areas of Beijing (The advertisement was being run on a Beijing television station). Scene 3 Father and son dutifully move to a non residential area and, in full view of his doting father, the boy, who appeared to be very young indeed, proceeds to light a firework the size of his arm with a book of matches. The pair of them then retreat a couple of inches and watch the beautiful display. Moral You can blow your own head off if you like, just don’t do it behind the Forbidden City. This is quite different for warnings in other countries that advise you to light fireworks with a 6 foot taper and to stand as far back as is humanly practical, and from warnings in Britain that tell you that lighting fireworks is racist. Angry Chinese Blogger’s Firework Safety Lessons After having been gratuitously exposed to a billion British messages warning me not to hold a sparkler by the hot end, and not to put fireworks into any of my bodily orifices, and a few more sensible ones from other countries, I feel that I should contribute to China’s long history of firework use by presenting 3 essential rules that will hopefully reduce the number of fatalities, or at least the number of people with three fingers on each hand.
A comparative note | ||||||||
That was hilarious by the way, I especially loved the stick men
pictures.
I would like to point out, that it is more than possible that the Chinese non-chalance in regards to fireworks is probably due to its popularity and the fact that it is common place. Common enough that people have become acclimated enough to the risks and are familiar enough with them to know naturally how to not hurt themselves. Being exposed as you yourself describe to the regulations of the world's biggest nanny state may have heightened your sense of danger to the point that what would otherwise be regarded as mundane becomes exceptional.
In otherwords, don't be a wuss, its only 2 fingers :P.
Jing [blah@blah.com]
Ahh, I've been reading your blog for a while now. But I don't think I've
seen anything funnier than the "hello sailor". Maybe I'm just
immature.
Anna
Looks like the US is sometimes an even bigger nanny state. You can have
fire ARMS but in many places, fire WORKS are illegal. That means you have
to rub elbows with someone in Chinatown or smuggle em over the border
yourself in order to get em, and then sneak out to the desert to shoot em
off. Before all the nanny laws, when I was a kid, us kids were known to do
all the dumb things with fireworks you just described, not to mention all
the beer drinking men who still love to throw cans of gasoline on a
campfire. Oh yeah, and don't forget about the hair spray and match powered
potato guns. Flames shoot out the end of the PVC pipe and that tater is
nearly in orbit! Pray that no one gets killed when it comes back down to
Earth.
Visit me @ http://www.theloonybin.blog-city.com/
first time to your blog, and this issue is really relevent. this is the
first spring festival i have spent here, and firecrackers/fireworks are a
real hazard/nuisance !
before i came to china i used to be surprised to read every year about a firework factory that blew up. well now that i see how many factories there must be, and considering the chinese safety measures, it seems one a year is a good average.
other scenes :
men/kids will go find a street corner, and for 15min or more will light
there firecrackers one by one, tossing them out on the sidewalk. is that
fun??? maybe it's chassing-spirits chore !
mommy giving the 4 year old todler a device bigger than his fore arm. shit, it's really scary.
even after 10 days of 'festival' (which should be called spring fireworks, there really aren't many festivities apart that and family gatherings), a huge explosion in a market place still scares the shit out of you :)
it's just a part of culture i guess, but really not the finest, objectively speaking.
and we haven't spoken of the deaths by mob trampling that occur when there are 'safe' city organised fireworks. but that is another issue :)
Piers [piers@stingo.net]
Hilarious!
Being Chinese and living in the UK, I can easily relate to what you are saying and agree with them on most points. But there are some points that disagree with, especially the comment portraying the UK as an Orwellian nanny state that it isn't (yet!?!). I concur that the UK has a lot of 'warnings', but that's all they are.. we can stand perfectly still for as long as we want on the pavements (sidewalk!) and not get a peep from the authorities, but rather more wierd looks from the locals for being there so long.
On the other hand, in the US, I always pictured people getting arrested for 'j-walking' if they stood too close to the sidewalk edge or crossed the road at the worng time/place?
And the Chinese? That's
another matter all together... they don't seem to see the danger as much as
the west does, handling fireworks is a regular occurance.
Personally (I
may be right or wrong), I believe that it stems from the main usage of
fireworks in history.
Chinese = firecrackers, wards of spirits, festive
West = weaponary
?? - correct me if i'm wrong
Ray
Not so much a correction, but …
China was using gunpowder to propel arrows when the west was in diapers, and as far as I’m aware, they China also pretty much invented the cannon as well. China on the whole as has a different approach to safety hazards. Playing with matches or lighters in the west is frowned upon, as is throwing firecrackers in the streets, in China they are a normal part of life. The same is true with traffic. Things that the west would consider to be intolerably unsafe, China considers normal.
I haven’t been to Britain in a good few years, but while I was there it felt like the government was trying to ban everything and regulate everything. There were so many things that you couldn’t do.
I also felt like I was suffocating under a mountain of minority pressure groups who wanted to block just about everything.
I even heard that they were banning parents from taking pictures at school plays in case one of them sold the pictures to a paedophile.
You have it all wrong. The festival is not to scare away evil spirits or
usher in the new year. It is the annual population control frenzy. Next
question, please.
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whats wrong dude. is it bad to say that it is funny.
Yeeehawww! This un' makes my neck glow red and my speach drawl real hard.
I say let them fellers blow stuff up. I'm gonna be a 16 yr ol' country kid
every time I hear it! lol.
ah. And bring a large collection of amazingly effective ear plugs for
sleeping. They do exist and I am importing them secretly in my
luggage...shhhhh